This application relates generally to fasteners, and more specifically to fasteners for securing lightweight decorations and objects to a variety of surfaces.
Lightweight decorations are used all over the world for celebrating various occasions including holidays, weddings, birthday parties, etc. These decorations come in all shapes and sizes from frilly garlands to flat banners. The surfaces being decorated consist of various materials, textures, and contours. Examples of these surfaces include: painted or papered drywall, paneling, window and door trim, brick veneer, ceilings, and glass.
Fasteners typically available to attach such decorations include: cellophane tapes, staples, hooks, tacks, and even nails. Cellophane tapes are adhesive based. Such tapes are a handy, temporary fastener and do not require penetration into the decorated surface. They are typically used by applying a length of tape that is long enough to go over the top of the decoration and have the ends of the tape adhere to the surface being decorated. This can be a quick, inexpensive way to apply decorations. However, they are applied so that the adhesive tape goes over the top of and comes into contact with the decoration.
When applied over a garland, the adhesive tape compresses the garland at each fastened point, detracting from its appearance. Also, the fringes from the garland usually get in the way when trying to apply the tape to the wall, causing poor adhesion. The tape also damages decorations such as garlands when removing. Cellophane tapes, when used, typically tape over a higher profile decoration, such as a light on a light-string, with the angle of the tape from the top of the light to the decorated surface being such that it is similar to the angle at which one would use to remove the tape when peeling tape from the surface. In this case the constant pull from gravity slowly peels the tape from the surface, causing the tape to fail and decoration to fall. This effect can also occur when the tape is going over the top of a wide decoration.
Nails, tacks, and staples hold well; however, when such fasteners are used they penetrate the decorated surface and therefore cause damage. Typically, they are designed for use as permanent fasteners.
In recent years, products such as 3M®'s Command™ line of fasteners including their Decorating Clips™ have been on the market. This fastener consists of a molded, rigid plastic base with a small hook and a pressure sensitive foam adhesive. The user places the foam adhesive on the base and applies the fastener to the surface being decorated. This fastener holds strong relative to its approximate one-half inch square base. It is designed so that the adhesive foam extends over the base on one side to provide a tab for the user to pull on for removal. This causes the foam to stretch laterally relative to the decorated surface so that the adhesive bond is broken without damage to the decorated surface. However, these semi-permanent fasteners are expensive.
In a typical application, hundreds of fasteners may be needed at considerable cost. Also, they require the user to combine the base and adhesive foam for every fastener used, which in a typical application can take up considerable time. Another drawback is that the base is rigid and therefore cannot be used on some applications or on tight contoured surfaces. Also, the hook is very small, limiting the types and quantity of decorations fastened at each point. Additionally, although the molded base and hook are made of clear plastic, the foam adhesive which is applied to the base and the extended tab are white and therefore are noticeable when applied to darker surfaces.
It is also known to affix a twist-tie to an object such as a ribbon bow with a staple. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,915,996, to Curry, the twist-tie is formed of a base layer covered with an adhesive with a wire disposed between the adhesive-bearing base layer and a peelable cover. The twist-tie has the peelable cover removed, and uses the adhesive on the base layer to secure the ribbon bow to a surface, without twisting. The twist-tie is not twisted about itself (the twist-tie lies flat on the surface). Such a configuration will work only if the ribbon bow is located on top of the surface, for example on the top of a package. Such a configuration will not effectively secure the ribbon bow in a hanging position, since the surface area of the adhesive layer on the twist-tie is too small to effectively do so.
The current choices of fasteners available for attaching lightweight decorations to a variety of surfaces do not adequately meet consumer needs. Such fasteners are either too expensive or time consuming when applying to be practical in many cases, or are the surface penetrating type which leave holes, or in the case of tapes, are applied over the decoration, detracting from the overall appearance of the decoration and typically having a high failure rate.